As a restless nation took to the streets for police reform in 2020, then-statehouse-candidate Karlee Provenza a Laramie Democrat traveled the streets of Wyoming’s third-largest city on a campaign of her own.
A PhD candidate in criminal justice at the University of Wyoming, Provenza had a personal relationship with the national conversation on redefining law enforcement. In the wake of the controversial police-involved shooting of mentally ill man Robbie Ramirez in her community in 2018, Provenza organized a police reform group, Albany County for Proper Policing.
On the campaign trail, Provenza pitched voters on a promise of not only delivering a progressive and working-class perspective to the Legislature, but on helping to reform the very thing that spurred her own activism: what she considers an oversight in the system. That oversight, she said, allows officers with patterns of misconduct elsewhere to serve in Wyoming.